Discussion Essay Sample on Animal-testing in Health Research

Doctors should not conduct health research and experiments by using live animals

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Medical research is one tough task to describe in the least way possible. The intricacy of the human body is very tough to understand due to the millions of cells in the body, the numerous chemical reactions that take place during metabolism and other human body functionalities. Getting a grasp of the functioning of the human body is key to understanding the ways to remedy malfunctions of these key components that keep the body processes at balance. Scientists for centuries now have been using animals; rats, rabbits and even birds as a focus point in medical research in a way to aid the excruciating task of understanding how the human body works. The use of tools that help mimics the human body is key to understanding the science that happens behind the scenes and it is important to learn these activities and mechanisms of altering them that one gets a clear picture of the intricacy of a living organism. On the other hand, it is believed that experimenting on animals is a violation of animal rights, many animal rights groups have come out strong decrying this practice, their main agenda is that there are other ways to go through understanding the human body and conduction of experiments without the need to use animals as lab experiments. Below is a discussion of the pros and cons of using animals as agents in understanding the human genome.

Development of new treatments and the scientific fundamental research in biomedicine will be hampered if at all animals are not used in experimentation of new drugs and treatment mechanisms. Things to note are that for many years now, animal experiments have aided in major scientific breakthroughs for the last century. Just to mention a few examples, the discovery of insulin was through the removal of pancreases in dogs, which has been critical to curing and management of diabetes. Animal research has been a comparatively big factor in the development of suppressors of ailments such as breast cancer, malaria, tuberculosis and many other diseases (Festing and Wilkinson).

The fact of the matter is that there are no other alternatives to experimentation on living organisms, the study of any living tissues in a petrish dish under a microscope does not give a scientist the whole imagery of what is going on in the central nervous system and even the endocrine system. To be able to investigate and draw conclusive actions on the side effect so of any experimental drug, one needs to observe the whole circulatory system. The truth of the matter is that technological advancement in biomedical research through the use of super computers does not help in getting a glimpse of the functioning of the complex processes in the human brain. From the case above, it can be established that there is actually no other viable alternative to experimenting on animals for biomedical research.

Taking the case of use of actual human beings as lab rats are unacceptable under the rights and freedoms of human in the Constitution, putting the life of a human being when experimenting with toxic substances is out of the question. It is a procedure that experiments are conducted first on animals before they are conducted on humans. On the flip side of the coin, animals too have benefited from such experiments, treatments for anthrax, feline leukemia and canine parvo virus would not have been developed if animals were not used in these experiments, therefore in this case, animal research for biomedical advancement is a win-win for both species.

Quite a number of animal rights groups claim that 95% of the animals under experimentation are not under the protection of the Animal Welfare Act. The cover does not include, mice, birds, rats and even fish; this leaves approximately other 25 Million animals at risk of experimentation ("Animal Testing - Procon.Org"). Use of animals as test subjects is practically cruel and considerably inhumane. The animals under research as usually subjected to force in every aspect; eating, inhalation and sometimes water deprivation, many claim infliction of burns and wounds to test the healing processes that take place ("Why Animal Experiments Are Not Necessary").

The use of human cells in experimentation can yield a lot more accurate results in experiments as opposed to the use of animals as subjects. There is a great deal of alternatives of human simulation gadgets through a virtual reconstruction of the human molecular structure that can help predict and analyze toxicity, reactions and even side effect without the need for invasive experimentation using animal life ("Why Animal Experiments Are Not Necessary"). Considering that the animal genome is very different from the human genome, it can be said that animals do make very poor test subjects leads to the thought of the inaccuracies that can be received while experimenting on them. The fact is that there are differences between humans and animals on things like metabolism, anatomy and cellular structure that bar animals far from being close to humans. The continuous experimentation of animals makes the whole process uncertain and highly questionable ("Animal Testing - Procon.Org").

The lives of animals are usually ended during or after the conduction of experiments on them; research shows that 87% of the studies conducted on animals do not take into account the randomization of selection of animals. Most researchers are not sure about which animals to use which ones not to use, this level of ambiguity tells of the level carelessness and non-concern of the research centers operate at. The animals that go through this levels of cruelty suffer just like humans would suffer, any form of suffering is considerably undesirable whether it is on a human being or an animal. The discrimination of animals just because of their inability to speak is just cruel; it is a humans task to take the moral call to help decry the suffering of animals and decrying animal experiments.

References

"Animal Testing - Procon.Org". Animal-testing.procon.org. N.p., 2016. Web. 13 Apr. 2016.

"Why Animal Experiments Are Not Necessary". Aerzte-gegen-tierversuche.de. N.p., 2016. Web. 13 Apr. 2016.

Festing, Simon, and Robin Wilkinson. "The Ethics of Animal Research. Talking Point on the Use of Animals in Scientific Research". EMBO Rep 8.6 (2007): 526-530. Web. 13 Apr. 2016.